CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 12-26-25
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- 27 min read
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I’m ready to review six new movies in this week’s capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, December 26th, 2025.
I’ve made no secret about this: I am a full-blown, card-carrying Chalamaniac. I think Timothée Chalamet is the finest young actor working today, and it’s been a joy watching this kid grow up on screen and keep getting better and better.
You go back to those early roles (even his small part in Interstellar is terrific), but then you stack up Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name, Beautiful Boy, Little Women, Bones and All… all amazing.
Then, of course, there are the Dune films where he’s a spectacular Paul Atreides, and Wonka, where he’s the best Willy Wonka anyone’s put on screen.
His remarkable turn as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown (where he should have won the Oscar instead of Adrien Brody sleepwalking through The Brutalist) was astonishing, the best performance of last year. And now, in Marty Supreme, he’s given the best performance of 2025.
This movie is the culmination of everything he’s capable of: charisma, physicality, speed, danger, comedy, tragedy, and sheer, relentless energy. Marty Supreme is the best performance of his career so far, which is saying a hell of a lot, because the guy’s already one of the best actors on the planet. He deserves an Oscar nomination for this, and frankly, he should win.
The story itself is deceptively simple: it’s the 1950s, table tennis is considered a goofy little pastime, and Marty Mauser (a wiry, motor-mouthed Jewish kid from the Lower East Side) has decided it is his destiny to make ping pong a sport the world has to take seriously.
He works in his Uncle Murray’s shoe shop by day, hustles at a dingy table tennis club by night, and in between, he’s sneaking into the stockroom to have frantic sex with his lifelong best friend Rachel, who happens to be married to the guy next door. This is Marty: charming, shameless, wildly ambitious, and morally flexible.
The opening title sequence pretty much tells you what kind of movie this is going to be. After that stockroom tryst, Josh Safdie cuts to microscopic shots of sperm swimming toward an egg while Alphaville’s “Forever Young” blasts on the soundtrack.
It’s crass, it’s hilarious, it’s strangely beautiful, and it sets up the entire movie: life as a competition, as a hustle, as a rigged game where the most relentless little fighter wins. That’s Marty Mauser.
He wants out. He wants London. He wants the British Open. He wants to be the king of ping pong, not some guy pushing shoes to tourists.
His Uncle Murray withholds his pay to keep him in the shop. His mother, Rebecca (a fantastic, needling, hypochondriac Fran Drescher), wants him to get a “real job.” And Rachel wants him to grow up and take responsibility for the inevitable consequences of all that stockroom fun.
Instead, Marty grabs a gun from the desk, waves it around to get the salary he thinks he’s owed, and bolts. That one stupid move will come back to bite him in spectacular fashion later on.
From there, the movie becomes a breathless, globe-trotting, anxiety-fueled odyssey: from the cramped tenements of the Lower East Side to the Ritz in London to Harlem Globetrotter halftime acts to Tokyo showdowns.
Marty hustles, lies, seduces, gambles, scams, and ping-pongs his way through every room he enters. He charms reporters with insane quotes (“I’m like Hitler’s worst nightmare”), breaks the hearts of the people who actually care about him, insults champions, and keeps talking himself into trouble and occasionally greatness.
In London, he crashes the table tennis world like a punk-rock bomb. He bullies his way into better accommodations, mouths off before playing Hungarian champion Béla Kletzki, cracking Holocaust jokes (“It’s alright, I’m Jewish, I can say that”) that make everyone around him flinch.
He flirts, then beds, faded movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow, giving her best performance in years), even as her tycoon husband Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary, perfectly smug) watches from the sidelines. And then, at the big moment, Marty loses, badly, to Japanese champion Endo.
He gets humiliated. But his showmanship is so strong that Rockwell still sees money in him and tries to turn him into a corporate shill, flying him to Japan to lose a series of scripted matches.
And that’s where you start to see what this movie is really about.
Because Marty Supreme is not just a sports movie. It’s not just a ping pong movie. It’s about America. It’s about ambition. It’s about the ugly stuff baked into the American dream: screw over whoever you have to, bend the rules, blow up the bridges, do whatever it takes to win.
Marty is a typical American in the most subversive way. A Lower East Side Jewish kid who absolutely believes the rules do not apply to him, and he will blow up everyone’s life around him to prove it.
He walks away from that cushy, rigged Japanese pen sponsorship gig because his ego won’t let him be the designated loser. He’d rather hustle on the road as a novelty act with Kletzki during Globetrotters games than admit he’s not the best.
He’d rather disappear for eight months than face Rachel, who’s now very visibly pregnant.
He’s a terrible boyfriend, a lousy son, a selfish friend, and a nightmare as a business partner. Yet you keep rooting for him. And that’s the miracle of Chalamet’s performance.
Physically, he’s astonishing here. He’s painfully skinny, covered in freckles and broken-out skin, with a sad little pencil mustache and Coke-bottle glasses. Safdie and Darius Khondji’s camera revels in how scrawny and odd he looks, and yet he is insanely charismatic. His body language is like a live wire.
He never stops moving: his hands, feet, head, and mouth are constantly in motion. He’s at a 10 on the energy scale from the first frame and somehow keeps cranking higher. You can practically feel your heart rate going up watching him bounce around. It’s Jolt Cola meets Mean Streets.
And then the movie just keeps piling on complications, in that classic Safdie way where one bad decision leads to five worse ones. There’s an incredible extended sequence involving Marty’s buddy Wally (Tyler Okonma, who is fantastic here), a sleazy criminal named Ezra Mishkin played with glorious weirdness by Abel Ferrara, and Ezra’s beloved dog.
Marty is supposed to take the dog to the vet. Instead, he sees a scam opportunity. What follows involves a fleabag hotel, a bowling alley, a gas station fire, a runaway dog, a shootout in the wilds of New Jersey, and Rachel nearly going into early labor.
All of that scored to Public Image Ltd.’s “The Order of Death.” It’s chaos. It’s hilarious. It’s tense as hell. And it’s an example of Safdie at the absolute top of his game, orchestrating madness while still letting scenes breathe.
That’s another thing: Marty Supreme proves that Josh Safdie is clearly the more talented of the Safdie brothers, and I don’t say that lightly. This is his first solo directorial effort since 2008, and it’s the best film with his name on it.
All the stuff people loved about Uncut Gems (the nerve-jangling tension, the constant hustle, the sense that every scene could end in disaster) is here, but this time it’s even more controlled, more ambitious, more emotionally rich.
The movie is like Uncut Gems meets Goodfellas meets Mean Streets meets Catch Me If You Can, with a ping pong paddle and Tears for Fears on the soundtrack.
Yes, Tears for Fears. One of the wildest and most inspired choices in the movie is the score and music. Daniel Lopatin provides a propulsive, pulsing score, and Safdie layers in ’80s synth-pop and New Wave over a story that takes place in the 1950s.
On paper, it sounds insane. In practice, it works beautifully. The movie opens with “Change” by Tears for Fears (and as soon as I heard that, I knew I was going to love this thing), and it closes with “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” which might as well be Marty’s theme song.
There are other ’80s synth cues sprinkled throughout, and somehow they enhance the whole thing rather than ripping you out of the period. The style of the filmmaking, the cutting, the performance energy… it all feels perfectly in sync with that music.
The supporting cast is a murderer’s row of oddballs, character actors, and weird cameos, which is classic Safdie. Odessa A’zion is fantastic as Rachel, Marty’s childhood friend turned lover turned co-conspirator, a woman just as crafty and relentless as he is.
Fran Drescher is hilarious and sad as his manipulative mother. Abel Ferrara is insane and wonderful, and there’s a moment where a bathtub falls on him that is one of the great visual sledgehammers of the year.
Kevin O’Leary is perfectly cast as the smug capitalist villain. Gwyneth Paltrow brings depth and sadness to Kay, the faded star who knows exactly who Marty is and sleeps with him anyway.
There are Globetrotters, real athletes, non-actors with incredible faces who look like they walked straight out of an R. Crumb comic. Even Penn Jillette has a remarkable cameo. Every corner of the movie is populated with interesting people.
And the sports side of it? The table tennis sequences are phenomenal. They’re suspenseful, clear, and thrilling. Ping pong is not inherently the most cinematic sport in the world, but you wouldn’t know that from this. Safdie and Khondji shoot and cut these matches with so much energy and rhythm that you get completely sucked in.
You understand Marty’s obsession because the movie makes ping pong look like life or death.
The whole film runs about two and a half hours and feels like 90 minutes. It’s breathless. You are on a train that is out of control from the opening sperm gag to the last, strange, moving, funny image that wraps everything up.
It covers about eight months of Marty’s life, and by the time it’s over, you’ve laughed, you’ve cringed, you’ve been stressed out, and you’ve found yourself rooting for a guy who, on paper, is completely unforgivable.
And that’s the magic trick. Safdie and Chalamet have built this entirely around a character who is selfish, manipulative, cruel, dangerous, and relentlessly self-serving. He does all the stupid, impulsive things that many twentysomethings attempt, and he succeeds.
He is a guy who does things that kind, rational people would never do, and yet you cannot stop watching him. You want to see what he’ll do next.
You want to see if he can pull off the impossible. You want him to win, even though you know he doesn’t deserve it.
That is America. That is the American dream. That is the ugly, true, exhilarating heart of this film.
Marty Supreme is one of the very best films of the year. It’s wholly original while still paying tribute to the movies that inspired it.
It’s a great New York movie, a great sports movie, a great character study, a great comedy, a great crime film, and a great scream into the void about what it takes to “make it” in this country.
It has some of the best cinematography of the year, one of the best soundtracks, and the single best performance any human has given in 2025 from Timothée Chalamet.
I loved every frame of Marty Supreme. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Here’s the thing about Anaconda. I should start by admitting that I’ve only seen the original Anaconda from 1997 exactly one time, and it left virtually no impression on me. I remember it being very silly, wildly over-the-top, occasionally funny, whether it meant to be or not, and loaded with cheesy special effects and performances cranked up to eleven.
Jon Voight’s accent alone felt like it was imported from another galaxy. Jennifer Lopez has never really done much for me. Ice Cube showing up was mildly pleasing, and Eric Stoltz being there at all was baffling.
I laughed at the infamous moment where Voight gets swallowed and you can see the outline of his face inside the snake, and I remember the regurgitation bit being kind of amusing, but beyond that, the movie evaporated from my brain almost immediately. It pops up on cable every now and then, I’ll watch two minutes, and then I move on with my life.
That said, Anaconda clearly means a lot to a lot of people, including the folks who made this new version. Jack Black and Paul Rudd have been very vocal about their love for the 1997 film, and this new movie is built on that affection.
This isn’t just a remake or a reboot; it’s a full-on meta exercise about remakes, reboots, nostalgia, and the desperation of people who feel like their best days are far behind them.
The setup is kind of clever. Paul Rudd plays Griff, a stalled-out bit actor whose biggest claim to fame is a three-episode run on the TV cop show S.W.A.T. (which is also a reboot).
Jack Black plays Doug, a wedding videographer in Buffalo who desperately wants to be a horror filmmaker (you know he’s a horror fanatic because he has a poster for Dario Argento’s 1980 masterwork Inferno on his office wall) and keeps trying to turn weddings into splatter movies.
Doug is married, has kids, and his wife is played by Ione Skye, who shows up briefly and whose appearance alone made me smile. It’s always great to see her, even if she’s stuck in a completely one-dimensional spouse role.
Steve Zahn plays their old friend Kenny, a recovering addict who provides most of the movie’s genuine laughs, and Thandiwe Newton plays Claire, another longtime friend who’s recently divorced and largely wasted by the script.
When Griff claims he’s acquired the rights to Anaconda, the group decides to fulfill a lifelong dream by heading into the Amazon to shoot their own DIY remake of the movie that defined their youth.
Naturally, this brilliant plan collapses when they encounter murderous gold miners, automatic weapons, and an actual giant anaconda that makes any cheap, practical-effects snake look laughable by comparison.
Selton Mello shows up as Santiago, a snake handler whose presence bridges the gap between movie fantasy and lethal reality, and Daniela Melchior plays Ana, a mysterious and capable figure tangled up in the miners' subplot.
That miners’ subplot, by the way, is one of the film’s biggest problems. Every time Anaconda tries to be a real action movie with real stakes, it completely falls apart. The gunfights, the bandits, and the forced suspense all feel unnecessary and distracting.
This movie wants to be a goofy meta-comedy about aging dreamers confronting their failures, but it keeps interrupting itself with action-movie nonsense that pads the runtime and kills the rhythm.
There are jokes here that work, especially early on. Steve Zahn is consistently funny, particularly when he explains his backstory and later spirals in the jungle. Paul Rudd and Jack Black have good chemistry, and even when the material is weak, they’re charming enough to keep things afloat.
I did appreciate the role reversal where Jack Black plays the comparatively responsible adult while Paul Rudd goes full delusional man-child mode. That switch-up is mildly refreshing.
The movie leans hard into meta humor, constantly referencing reboots, reimaginings, rights issues, and Hollywood’s addiction to recycling intellectual property. Some of that lands; some of it feels smug and repetitive.
There’s a five-minute gag involving Jack Black needing Steve Zahn to urinate on an insect bite that goes on about four and a half minutes too long, which pretty much sums up the film’s sense of comedic timing. A few jokes are funny, but then they just keep hammering them into the ground.
One of the biggest self-inflicted wounds here is how badly the marketing sabotages the movie. If you’ve seen the trailer or the poster, you already know one of the film’s biggest late-game comic set pieces involving Jack Black and the anaconda.
It’s a moment that might have worked better as a surprise, but it’s been completely spoiled in advance. When it finally happens, it barely registers.
There are also a couple of cameos tied to the 1997 film that are clearly meant to thrill longtime fans. I saw them coming a mile away and felt absolutely nothing, but if you worship the original, you might get a kick out of them.
The audience I saw this with was polite but underwhelmed, laughing occasionally but never really locked in.
The most telling moment came after the screening, when I heard an eight- or nine-year-old kid walking out with an adult say, “There’s no way that was ninety-nine minutes. It felt like twenty hours.” That pretty much says it all.
Anaconda isn’t the worst thing in the world. It has a few laughs, some mildly amusing meta commentary, and Steve Zahn doing Steve Zahn things is always welcome. But it’s cluttered, messy, padded with unnecessary subplots, and far less funny than it thinks it is.
Unless you’re a hardcore fan of the 1997 movie or deeply invested in inside jokes about reboots and intellectual property, there’s really no reason to bother. When a nine-year-old clocks the movie’s misery so accurately, it’s hard to argue. - ⭐️⭐️
Song Sung Blue is, without question, the biggest cinematic surprise of the year. I walked into the screening room expecting… I don’t know, a pleasant little music bio-drama about a Neil Diamond tribute act. Maybe something cute, or maybe something corny, or maybe something that would coast on nostalgia and Hugh Jackman’s natural charm.
I absolutely did not expect to get knocked on my ass by how much I enjoyed this movie, or how moved I was, how often I laughed, or how hard I rocked along to all the great Neil Diamond songs. This thing charmed me from beginning to end. I was in it emotionally, musically, and completely.
It helps that the story is incredible… and true. The movie is based on Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary about Mike and Claire Sardina, a Milwaukee husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute act known as Lightning & Thunder.
And I know that sounds like the setup to a Christopher Guest mockumentary, but nope: this is a real couple, a real story, and a real American-dream-you-can’t-believe-it’s-real tale.
They were working-class Wisconsinites who somehow became local legends, so beloved that Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam literally asked them to open for their Wisconsin shows. Onstage. Singing Neil Diamond. It’s insane. And it all happened.
Craig Brewer, who hasn’t made a film this good since Black Snake Moan, directs the hell out of this thing. Brewer has always had a feel for music. Hustle & Flow won an Oscar for Best Song, and the blues-drenched swagger of Black Snake Moan still holds up beautifully. And he brings that same musical passion here.
This movie vibrates with sound. It practically sweats melody. It’s a full-blown musical, and I don’t think the marketing is emphasizing that enough. There are thirteen Neil Diamond songs performed throughout, and each one is staged with real energy, emotion, and joy.
And when your leads are Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, two legitimately great singers with stage presence to burn, the musical numbers come alive. Jackman and Hudson nail the vocals, nail the harmonies, nail the showmanship, and Brewer mixes the music in a way that makes the performances feel like live-wire, beer-soaked, bar-band magic.
Jackman plays Mike Sardina, a recovering alcoholic, Vietnam vet, and Milwaukee mechanic living in a house literally beneath the flight path of a runway (a symbolic detail Brewer uses brilliantly). Life is always roaring over Mike. He’s constantly ducking, dodging, and pushing forward.
This guy is instantly lovable, instantly root-able, and Jackman gives one of his most soulful, warm performances. The film actually opens with the best AA meeting scene I’ve ever seen (very funny, heartfelt, beautifully observed), and from that moment on, I was in this movie’s pocket.
Claire, meanwhile, is played by Kate Hudson, and I say this with sincerity: this is the best performance of her career since Almost Famous. Actually, scratch that: this might be the best performance she has ever given.
She has never come close to matching the magic she displayed 25 years ago in Cameron Crowe’s masterpiece… until now. Hudson is a revelation here.
As Claire, she sings Patsy Cline, she sings Neil Diamond, she nails a Wisconsin accent, she handles drama, comedy, romance, motherhood, depression, and trauma. This is a fully dimensional, lived-in, deeply human performance. She is the heart and soul of the movie.
Yes, Jackman is wonderful. But Hudson is the powerhouse. She is astonishing.
Their chemistry is beautiful: two unlikely actors playing two deeply unlikely Midwestern dreamers, bringing out the best in each other. It’s inspired casting. And it works.
The early section of the movie is pure joy. Music, romance, Milwaukee local color, and the kind of working-class pride that feels completely real. Brewer shoots this film like he genuinely loves these people.
The scenes of Mike and Claire forming Lightning & Thunder, rehearsing with Mark Shurilla (Michael Imperioli), playing early gigs, and getting cheered on by friends, family, and fellow impersonators (including a James Brown impersonator named Sex Machine played by Mustafa Shakir) are all warm, funny, and irresistible.
And yes, Michael Imperioli dressed as Buddy Holly and singing “Peggy Sue” is worth the ticket price alone.
And then you get the big “holy crap” moments, like when Eddie Vedder (John Beckwith) calls them personally and asks them to open for Pearl Jam. And then Mike gets to duet “Forever In Blue Jeans” with Vedder on stage. Yes, this really happened in real life.
It’s a moment designed for the movies, but it actually occurred, and the movie captures that sense of awe, pride, disbelief, and pure Midwestern joy perfectly.
But life is not all duets and applause, and the movie is honest about that. Tragedy hits. Hard. Claire is in a terrible accident, and the film dives into her depression, pain, and recovery.
This middle section is the only part of the movie that dips a bit, but the performances are so strong that it never derails the film. And it comes roaring back in the final act, which is moving, funny, sad, triumphant, and incredibly satisfying.
And the supporting cast is loaded. Jim Belushi is fantastic as their low-rent casino manager, giving his best performance in years. Fisher Stevens is funny and warm. King Princess is terrific as Mike’s teenage daughter. Ella Anderson and Hudson Hensley are both excellent as Claire’s kids.
Everyone brings authenticity to this world of impersonators, dreamers, strugglers, and underdogs. And that’s what this movie ultimately is: a love letter to underdogs.
To working-class people who dare to dream a little bigger than their circumstances. To parents trying to do better. To couples who rebuild their lives. To communities that rally behind their own. To musicians (real or pretend) who find meaning in songs.
And to Neil Diamond, whose music is treated here with sincerity, joy, and zero irony. Song Sung Blue worships at the church of Neil Diamond with open arms.
I laughed. I cried. I sang along. And by the end, I was emotionally overwhelmed by how much I cared about these people.
Song Sung Blue is warm. It’s moving. It’s enormously entertaining. And it contains the best performance Kate Hudson has given in 25 years.
One of the biggest surprises of 2025, one of the most enjoyable films of the year, and a movie that will absolutely floor Neil Diamond fans and win over everyone else.
A terrific movie. A great love story. And an even better surprise. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
There are filmmakers who make good movies, filmmakers who make great movies, and then there are the inexplicably rare ones who seem to reinvent the entire art form every time they pick up a camera. Park Chan-wook is on that upper shelf.
Seoul’s cinematic superhero. One of the planetary greats. The guy whose movies don’t just play at festivals; they alter cinema consciousness for a little while.
The vengeance trilogy alone (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the extraordinary Oldboy, Lady Vengeance) would have secured him a legacy. Add Thirst, Stoker, The Handmaiden, Decision to Leave, and you’ve got an oeuvre that’s violent, beautiful, weird, uncomfortable, darkly hilarious, meticulously crafted, and sometimes shockingly moving. You don’t watch a Park Chan-wook movie; you submit to it.
And along comes No Other Choice, the movie he’s apparently calling the culmination of his career. And honestly? I get it. It might actually be the most thematically rich, emotionally grounded, and tonally acrobatic thing he’s ever done.
It’s audacious, twisted, socially pissed off, laugh-out-loud funny, and somehow still deeply humane. It is one of the best movies of 2025.
Based on Donald Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax (and yes, Costa-Gavras already made a solid French adaptation back in 2005, a fact Park didn’t know until after he had written his own script), No Other Choice centers on Yoo Man-su, played with brilliance by Lee Byung-hun.
He’s a paper industry expert with 25 years at the same company, living a comfortable upper-middle-class Korean life: the refurbished childhood home, the blended family, the cello-prodigy daughter, the dance classes, the tennis, the dogs, the streaming subscriptions... the whole fantasy.
Then an American buyout happens, thousands are fired, and Man-su promises he’ll find another paper-job gig in three months. Thirteen months later he’s working a humiliating retail job, the family’s selling everything not bolted down, the dogs have been shipped off to the in-laws, and even Netflix gets the axe. (That cancellation moment? Brutal. Hilarious. That’s when you know the struggle’s real.)
As desperation melts into delusion, Man-su becomes convinced there’s only one way to reclaim his old life: eliminate the competition. Literally. He puts out a fake job ad for a fictional company called Red Pepper Paper (yes, really), so he can identify the best applicants and kill them.
Meanwhile he’s dealing with foreclosure threats, a dental crisis he keeps ignoring, his wife’s potential infidelity, his stepson’s crime spree, and the fact that his targets are all surprisingly complicated, broken, or strangely likable people.
The plot spirals. A rattlesnake bite. Domestic meltdowns. A botched murder attempt that turns into a marital murder committed by someone else. Bodies buried under apple trees.
Drunken bonding. Moral panic. Corporate satire. AI taking over factories. A costumed dance party. Influencers. Gardening. Guns. And in the middle of it all, a man who both loves his family and absolutely should not be allowed near sharp objects.
It builds to a darkly hilarious and depressingly perfect finale, which is Park Chan-wook’s punchline: corporate culture is the real killer.
No Other Choice is Park Chan-wook firing on all cylinders, and maybe installing a few new cylinders while he’s at it.
Tonally, this thing is wild. It is black comedy of the pitch-dark variety, but it’s also a satirical portrait of modern work, a domestic drama, a corporate horror story, and a twisted thriller about what happens when survival instincts mix with pride, ego, and late-stage capitalism.
And through it all, it’s incredibly funny: like laugh-out-loud-in-shock funny.
There’s a snake-bite scene that is one of the funniest sequences of the year. A domestic-faceplant-of-a-murder scene involving an affair, a picnic, and a gun is so absurd you can’t even believe it’s happening.
Every attempted murder gets more complicated, more humiliating, and more tightly choreographed than the last. Park stages them like action ballet crossed with a Laurel & Hardy routine dipped in blood.
And the corporate satire is razor sharp. You laugh because it’s funny; you shudder because it’s true.
Lee Byung-hun is extraordinary here. Truly one of his greatest roles. He plays Man-su like a man walking a tightrope between pathetic and sympathetic, monstrous and mundane. One minute you’re horrified by him, the next minute you almost want him to succeed, and then the movie slaps you for feeling that way.
Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won... everybody is terrific. These supporting characters feel lived-in, broken, funny, tragic, and specific. Even the “targets” feel like real humans with real flaws and real pain, which makes the violence both funny and uncomfortable… which is exactly where Park Chan-wook likes to live.
This thing is gorgeous. Shot with that trademark Park Chan-wook precision, with every frame layered in wit and detail. The music choices (pop, rock, classical, you name it) are perfect. The editing is sharp and rhythmic; the murder-attempt sequences are almost musical in how they escalate.
But what separates this one from some of Park’s darker, more pessimistic earlier films is the emotional undercurrent. This one has heart. It has ache. It has genuine family stakes.
There are moments with the daughter, or the stepson, or the dogs, or the wife, that feel surprisingly tender. It’s still dark (don’t get me wrong), it’s bloody and twisted and filled with moral corrosion. But it ends on something resembling light. Not optimism, exactly, but something warmer than Park’s usual cinematic nihilism.
At its core, No Other Choice is a movie about survival. It is about the lengths people will go to protect their families, their status, their pride, their perceived worth.
It’s about a world where corporations treat employees as disposable, where automation replaces human beings, and where middle-class comfort is a fragile illusion that can be destroyed with a memo.
It’s about desperation turning into madness. And it’s about how scary and funny that transformation can be.
It’s also just a wickedly entertaining black comedy. Bloody, hysterical, uncomfortable, morally thorny, and absolutely riveting.
No Other Choice is one of the best movies of 2025. It’s Park Chan-wook at his most confident, most daring, and weirdly most emotional.
It’s a satire, a thriller, a comedy, a tragedy, and a vicious takedown of corporate and AI-driven culture, all wrapped around a story about a man doing despicable things for reasons we disturbingly understand.
It’s funny. It’s dark. It’s twisted. It’s heartfelt. It’s shocking. It’s gorgeous. It’s Park Chan-wook doing Park Chan-wook, but bigger, richer, and maybe even better. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Every once in a while, a movie comes along that is so convinced it is Important (capital “I”) that you can practically hear the filmmakers whispering “we are changing cinema” as they set up each shot. And usually when you hear that whisper, you know you’re in trouble.
The Testament of Ann Lee is one of those movies. A big, solemn, gorgeously photographed, spiritually tortured, musically “innovative” (read: awkward) would-be epic from Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, who are the same duo behind last year’s pretentious, hollow, inexplicably celebrated slog The Brutalist.
And just like The Brutalist, this one is a beautiful empty box. Expensive wrapping paper. Nothing inside.
And the most frustrating part? There’s a fascinating true story buried under all the aesthetic posturing. The Shakers. Ann Lee. 18th-century religious fanaticism. Ecstatic worship. Celibacy. Gender equality. A woman claiming to be the female embodiment of Christ.
That’s all inherently interesting. You could make a terrific documentary. You could write a gripping book. But this… this is a 70mm, slow-motion, choreographically constipated techno-ritual of self-importance smothering a fascinating piece of history.
The film spans Ann Lee’s life from her miserable childhood in England to her spiritual awakening, her rise as the leader of the Shaker movement, her personal tragedies, her visions, her insistence that celibacy is the only path to salvation, and the community’s eventual migration to America.
Persecution, religious intensity, communal utopian dreams: all of it is here.
And on paper? It sounds like riveting material. You’ve got fanaticism. Sexual repression. A woman redefining Christianity in a patriarchal century. Dancers shaking themselves into ecstatic religious frenzy. Visions. Mortality. Obsession. Immigration. Everything you need for an emotional, spiritual, and dramatic powder keg.
But this movie is so wrapped up in trying to be mythic and operatic and “cinematically pure” that it forgets to be anything else, like, say… engaging.
I don’t know what it is with Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet. They get their hands on some of the best cameras and sound equipment in the business. They shoot on 70mm. They compose these impeccable, museum-quality images. They take huge technical risks. They assemble killer casts. They get studio support that most directors would kill for.
And then they make films that feel like homework assignments from the world’s most pretentious grad student.
The Brutalist was the poster child for this: technically competent, artistically empty, all scaffolding and no building. And, unfortunately, The Testament of Ann Lee suffers from the exact same syndrome.
These two have convinced themselves they’re reinventing cinema when what they’re actually doing is regurgitating better films, better ideas, better techniques... without the soul or the storytelling to back it up.
The movie also integrates musical numbers based on the Shakers’ ecstatic worship style: the shaking, the hand movements, the chanting, the communal ecstasy. And sure, historically that’s accurate. That’s how the Shakers worshipped. There’s definitely a compelling angle in turning that into a musical vocabulary.
But my god, the execution.
It’s as if Fastvold has never seen a musical in her life. Or worse, she has, and is actively trying to make an anti-musical. The choreography is sloppy, repetitive, and stiff. The staging is awkward. The editing undercuts the rhythms. The camera seems afraid of letting the music actually breathe. Everything feels like it’s working against itself.
It’s pageantry without purpose. Ritual without emotion. Noise without meaning.
Instead of expanding the story, the musical sequences just make the whole thing feel longer, louder, and more irritating.
Here’s the part that kills me: Amanda Seyfried is fantastic. Truly fantastic. She throws herself into the role, emotionally and physically. It’s a raw, draining, committed performance.
You believe her visions. You believe her pain. You believe the authority and the frailty. She’s doing extraordinary work in the middle of a movie that doesn’t deserve her.
Christopher Abbott (one of my favorite actors) does solid work too, even though he’s basically playing “the Christopher Abbott role,” the emotionally knotted, quietly intense, brooding guy he’s been stuck playing for a decade.
Thomasin McKenzie is good. Stacy Martin is good. Viola Prettejohn is good.
But they’re all trapped in this thick fog of dull, ponderous filmmaking. Lewis Pullman might as well not exist here, but it's not his fault, the script gives him absolutely nothing. Tim Blake Nelson and Matthew Beard are wildly inconsistent, swinging between oddly mannered and outright cartoonish.
It’s a waste of a very talented cast.
This movie is so convinced that it’s profound that it refuses to do anything as simple as tell a story. It hides behind hand-waving symbolism, repetitive ritualistic sequences, and long, funereal passages where people just stare into middle distance while gorgeous 70mm photography does all the work.
But visuals without intention? Still empty. Sound design without emotional connection? Still empty. Religious fervor without anything to say about it? Still empty.
And despite the fact that I occasionally learned something interesting about Shaker history (which genuinely is compelling stuff) it came packaged in the most pretentious, teeth-grindingly self-serious delivery system imaginable.
Here’s where the movie fails hardest: I didn’t feel anything.
This is a story about grief. About lost children. About persecution. About spiritual torment. About a woman who believes she is the embodiment of Christ. About followers giving up sex, marriage, and their entire identities. About building a utopia under threat.
And yet… nothing. No resonance. No connection. Nothing beyond surface-level pageantry.
There’s a lot of shaking. A lot of arm movements. A lot of ritual. A lot of screaming. A lot of bodies contorting and murmuring and chanting. But none of it feels like it means anything.
In the end, The Testament of Ann Lee is beautifully shot emptiness. A gorgeous, hollow, pretentious experiment weighed down by filmmakers who think they’re reinventing the form when they’re mostly just exhausting the audience.
Despite Seyfried’s terrific central performance (and it really is terrific) the movie around her is a slog. Repetitive. Annoying. Emotionally numb. Musically inept. Historically intriguing but dramatically dead.
It’s a partial history lesson drowned in cinematic self-importance. A waste of great equipment, great actors, and a great story. One of the most irritating movies of the year.
And hey, if you really want to learn about the Shakers? Read a book. Watch a documentary. But absolutely do not rely on The Testament of Ann Lee, unless your personal religion happens to be cinematic pretension. - ⭐️1/2
Bradley Cooper has now been around for over two decades, and his career has been a strange and uneven one. He started out playing a lot of interchangeable douchebag roles in studio comedies like Wedding Crashers, The Hangover movies, and other forgettable stuff. For a long time, he felt completely undistinguished as an actor.
That changed when he worked with David O. Russell on Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, which revealed an actor who could bring nuance and vulnerability to the screen. Since then, I’ve liked him in several movies (he is especially great in Nightmare Alley, and Licorice Pizza), and when he made his directorial debut with A Star Is Born, I thought he did a genuinely solid job.
That film was anchored by an outstanding performance from Lady Gaga, featured strong music, and turned out to be one of the better versions of that endlessly remade story.
Then came Maestro, one of the worst movies of 2023. A staggeringly pretentious, self-important, hollow mess that revealed a filmmaker whose ego had completely taken over.
It was a movie where Leonard Bernstein’s life became secondary to obnoxious camera moves, show-offy direction, and a painfully inaccurate, self-conscious performance by Cooper himself. It was embarrassing, misguided, and empty.
So now we get Is This Thing On?, a domestic comedy-drama about a middle-aged couple navigating an amicable divorce, and while it is not quite the unwatchable catastrophe that Maestro was, it is still one of the worst films of 2025.
The movie stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern as Alex and Tess, a long-married couple who decide, calmly and mutually, to end their relationship. Alex drifts into stand-up comedy as a way to process his unraveling life, while Tess attempts to redefine herself after years of compromise.
On paper, this sounds like familiar but workable material. In practice, it is handled with such false sincerity, such clumsy imitation of better filmmakers, and such a profound lack of genuine human insight that the entire thing collapses under its own pretensions.
Bradley Cooper, as a director, is desperately trying to make a hip, edgy, independent film, but he does not have an independent filmmaker’s sensibility. What he has is the sensibility of a massive movie star pretending to be an indie auteur.
The movie is filled with shaky handheld camerawork meant to suggest realism, but it only calls attention to itself. There are awkward symbolic cutaways, including a recurring dragon performance motif that feels like the kind of idea someone thinks is profound at three in the morning and never revisits with a clear head.
The entire film feels like Cooper trying to cosplay as John Cassavetes, Jim Jarmusch, or even the worst version of Woody Allen (and is there anything but a worst version?), and failing on every level.
The performances don’t help. Will Arnett is stiff, lifeless, and completely inert in the lead role. There is nothing happening behind his eyes, nothing connecting him to the emotional stakes of the story.
Laura Dern, clearly aware that she is trapped in a bad script, tries desperately to generate something authentic, but desperation is exactly what her performance ends up radiating.
Bradley Cooper himself appears as Alex’s best friend, Balls, and it is one of the most annoying supporting performances of the year. It feels designed solely to draw attention to Cooper as a quirky, scene-stealing presence, and it backfires spectacularly.
The supporting ensemble, which includes Andra Day, Sean Hayes, and others, feels forced and insincere. The friendship dynamics ring false, the dialogue feels written rather than spoken, and every interaction feels staged rather than lived in.
In fact, almost all of those moments feel like scenes recycled from The Big Chill, but updated for 2025...and no one needs, or wants, scenes recycled from that horrible movie.
The casting of Peyton Manning in an awkward date scene with Laura Dern is another example of Cooper mistaking stunt casting for personality. The scene doesn’t work at all, and it only reinforces how artificial everything feels.
Manning is also part of a painfully contrived sequence in which Tess wanders into a comedy club and overhears Alex performing deeply personal stand-up material about their marriage. The coincidence is laughable, the execution is clumsy, and the emotional payoff is nonexistent. It is the kind of moment that might work in a better movie, but here it just feels lazy and manipulative.
The most frustrating thing is that the film accidentally stumbles into something real for about eight minutes. Those moments happen when the camera stops worrying about symbolism and pretension and simply observes actual stand-up comedians in their natural environment.
Amy Sedaris, as the comedy club manager, is fantastic. Chloe Radcliffe, Dave Attell, Jordan Jensen, Reggie Conquest, and other real comedians bring authenticity, humor, and humanity to the screen.
The scenes where comics talk about writing jokes, bombing onstage, and processing their lives through comedy are the only moments that feel alive. They are accurate and real (I have been witness to many of those kinds of conversations), and they work.
It is painfully obvious that Cooper allowed these performers to improvise, and it shows. Those scenes breathe. They feel honest. They feel human.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie feels like a hollow shell built around those moments. The family dynamics don’t work. The parents, played by Christine Ebersole and Ciarán Hinds, are miscast and underdeveloped.
Even small details are handled sloppily, like the reference to the kids being “Irish twins,” which is not only inaccurately explained but treated as a cute quirk rather than something the film even bothers to understand.
This is a movie about divorce that has nothing new to say about divorce. Every theme, every emotional beat, every awkward moment has been done better in hundreds of other films.
What makes this particularly aggravating is that it is clearly made by someone who thinks he is saying something profound, when in reality he is just mimicking better filmmakers without understanding why their work resonates.
Is This Thing On? is not as catastrophically awful as Maestro, but it is close. It is pretentious, boring, emotionally empty, and deeply insincere. It is a superstar actor trying to announce himself as an important humanist filmmaker and revealing, instead, how disconnected he is from actual human behavior.
The only time the movie works is when Bradley Cooper steps back and lets real people talk about real things. Unfortunately, that happens far too rarely.
This is one of the worst movies of 2025. - ⭐️
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